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Cannibal cop forced to eat a CFAA conviction

You’ve surely heard about the New York City police officer who was charged with conspiring to kidnap his wife and other women so he could torture, rape, murder, and then eat them. A jury convicted the officer, Gilberto Valle, last year, but earlier this month a court entered a judgment of acquittal, finding that the evidence was insufficient to prove that there was actually a genuine agreement and a specific intent to kidnap the women. Instead, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found, the Internet chats among the alleged co-conspirators amounted to an exceptionally twisted fantasy. What you might have missed, though, is that the court upheld Valle’s conviction for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act based on his using an NYPD computer to query a federal law enforcement database to obtain information about a potential target of his appetite. Courts have divided over whether an employee "exceeds authorized access" when he misuses information that he obtained from the company’s computer. But the court here sidestepped that issue by finding that Valle had violated an NYPD restriction on access to the computer system. The decision offers useful guidance to employers and potential cannibals alike.